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Comment by deadbeeves | Hacker News Reader

>Many otherwise intelligent people think that religion/philosophy is purely subjective, merely a word game

Well, "subjective" is the wrong word, but I get what you mean. However, aren't they just word games? It's not like theology and philosophy study anything real. They just investigate what can be deduced from specific axiomatic systems that are entirely divorced from reality. Theologians aren't even consistent, since they have dogmas that they'll contort around in order to avoid contradicting, even if that involves contradicting other parts of scripture.

I'll never forget the time I asked a philosophy undergraduate why he decided to go to university for philosophy rather than just reading the bibliography by himself, and he told me that by doing so he could teach philosophy. An academic pyramid scheme.

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Generally speaking university gives you the tools and guides you. Most of the people aren't able to study university level subjects on their own.

That might be the case for other disciplines, but it certainly isn't for philosophy. There are no special techniques, you just read what other people have said on the subject. What else is there?

Discussions and having a peer group seems like it would be helpful for learning philosophy.

Sure, but my question was about the purpose of studying philosophy in university. "It's easier than doing it by yourself" is not a purpose. There's still nothing you can do with what you've learned, other than become a professor.

I just want to point out that you haven’t made a good argument for this to be true at all. One person does not make a pyramid scheme. Someone into cooking and teaching could go to culinary school and tell you their dream is to be a culinary instructor. Doesn’t make it a pyramid scheme.

Philosophy has one of the highest average incomes of degrees, because of the number of graduates that go into law and business.

The implicit argument is that I don't see what else one could possibly do with a degree in philosophy.

> Philosophy has one of the highest average incomes of degrees, because of the number of graduates that go into law and business.

And why do they need those degrees in order to do that? What are they employed to do?

One thing you can do with a degree in philosophy is get into law school. After graduating from law school you can be employed as a lawyer. They’re not philosophy lawyers, just normal lawyers.

This isn’t some fringe thing. Play around with some Google searches like “what can you do with a philosophy degree?”, “best pre-law degrees”, “philosophy and law school” and you will see what else one could possibly do with a degree in philosophy.

I didn't think I needed to specify "that you can't do without a philosophy degree". You can get into law school without a philosophy degree, too.

That’s a pretty important qualifier. Most degrees don’t take something from impossible to possible. That’s pretty much only certifications. Is there anything you can do with a CS degree that you can’t otherwise, besides be a CS professor? Even really high level jobs will have people with other degrees.

That was the idea in the past.

University now teaches you precisely what to think, and makes clear the consequences of ‘wrongthink’.

> It's not like theology and philosophy study anything real.

That is a viewpoint. This is the exact fallacy pointed out upper in the thread. This is just a viewpoint of yours, however commonly held it may be in the society of today.

No, I'm not talking about something as banal as whether a god exists. I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture. That's not a point of view, that's what theology is. Regardless of whether magic exists, I think we can both agree we can't find out by reading Harry Potter.

The same for philosophy. I like to half joke that modern philosophy is what's left after taking out all the useful parts of ancient natural philosophy and putting them into either mathematics or science.

If you think this way you must also think lawyers don’t study anything real because they study laws.

It's not really an apt analogy. Law is not a field of inquiry like science, philosophy, mathematics, and theology are. Lawyers do not push the boundaries of understanding, they're clerks. That aside, laws are not divorced from reality, they're agreements that members of a society enter into regarding how the society is supposed to function. To study law is to study the way society works. Yes, society is an artificial construct, which why law is not a field of inquiry, but it still provably exists.

Again this is your viewpoint.

Very naive of you to think that religion, scripture, or existence of God are unprovable problems.

Many people don’t agree with you on the both sides. Many think there is definitively no God and many think there is.

> Again this is your viewpoint.

What is my viewpoint? Exactly what that I have presented as if it was an objective fact is subjective? Please enlighten me, because I have no idea what you're trying to say.

>Very naive of you to think that religion, scripture, or existence of God are unprovable problems.

When did I say that? What I said was that society provably exists, and I said that to emphasize that the subject matter of law is something real, not to imply by omission that the existence of god/a god/gods is unprovable.

>Many people don’t agree with you on the both sides. Many think there is definitively no God and many think there is.

Cool. I'm not talking about the existence of a god nor about what people think about the topic. I'm talking about theology and philosophy as fields of study.

I’m a different person, but maybe I can help clarify.

> I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture.

This paragraph, especially the italicized portion, implies the statement “scripture isn’t real”.

That can be taken a few different ways. One is that scripture doesn’t exist. Obviously that’s not true, so probably not what you meant.

The other is that scripture is fiction or wrong or made up or not representative of reality or something in this general sphere of belief. Your clarifications, like mentioning Harry Potter, show that this is what you meant.

Stating that scripture is fiction is a viewpoint. You’re not even describing just Christian theology but theology in general. So you’re putting out that every claim that some text was divinely inspired is false. I’m not arguing with you on this, just saying it’s a viewpoint you’re putting out.

I don’t think you mentioned it explicitly, but theologians also study more than scripture. So to say theologians don’t study reality is to also say this is t real (although you didn’t say that explicitly).

This all adds up to you taking some position, having some viewpoint in the realm of metaphysics, ontology, theology, etc. You’re saying some things are and are not true about god, like the holy bible is not truth based on reality.

I agree with this. On top of what he said, I can add this just to clarify more:

> I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture.

Your viewpoint unshared by many others here is that we cannot determine the existence of god by studying scripture. I say 'unshared by others' to emphasize they are subjective.

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